[CHAPTER IX]
THE CONSUL
Again in the mist and shadow of sleep
He saw his native land.
The hero of this and all our adventures, feeling unheroic and disinclined for further traffic with his fellows, did not proceed to the board of the Widow Prasko, or to the no less hospitable embrace of her lovely daughter, but nursed revenge and a sore back by a walk on the walls. The path along the summit of these old fortifications is broad and smooth: it commands sea, mountains, town and all four corners of the heavens; many lovers, dreamers and successful suicides have passed that way. Yet surely it would need more than the vivid recollection of a sound thrashing to make a man leave such a prospect as that wall affords, especially westward, to the mountains and the setting sun. So Norman walked along the walls and not off them.
How to attain satisfaction? Whom to seek in this dilemma? How to be revenged and not ridiculed? How, above all, to get level with those lunatics without again being stripped and whipped like a schoolboy or enduring a worse thing, according to the strange young President's threat? What was the meaning of it, the sense of it, the clue to this mysterious and painful practical joke? Where, above all, was that ancient scoundrel of a poet and in what disguise, and why was he not present at the scene? Had the old curiosity shop been invented from the very beginning simply to attract him? How could they have known he would take the Poet's hint and look there for the present? How was it they were all prepared for him when he came? And, finally, what was the real value of the handsome buckle which he was to give Peronella? He pulled it out of his pocket: if the stones were real, and they looked it, he judged it to be worth a fabulous sum. For a moment he thought it might all have been a plot of Cesano's to befool him. But common sense soon rejected that theory: so artistic and elaborate a practical joke was far beyond the conception of that thin-brained cavalier. Norman walked twice round the walls in hopeless bewilderment, and longed to find a trusty soul to whom he could impart the whole affair. Then, as for the third time he faced the East, the sun of inspiration blazed full on the fields of his intellect.
Visions of Britain's might awake to protect her humblest subject rolled across his mind; of Dreadnoughts blackening the horizon, of a ten minutes' bombardment, of being hauled from prison by merry bluejackets pouring brandy down his throat, of shaking hands with a clean-shaven Admiral, of a protectorate over Alsander, and the immediate repaving of the roads and reconstruction of the sewers.
Was there no British Consulate in Alsander?
Comforted by a resolve to appeal to the might of Britain, he returned at once to the board of the Widow Prasko and the no less hospitable arms of her charming daughter. They had been quite anxious about him.
"And where is it?" was the girl's first question.
He pulled out the exquisite toy, and Peronella cooed with delight.